What Have You Ever Conserved?

That retort of “what have you ever conserved” oft spouted by both the Alt-Right and the more emotional Johnny-come-latelys to the root of the struggle against the Fabian Left and their Gramscian march, is an obnoxious, and usually ignorant, thing.

Often the targets of this taunt are accused of being “soy boy beta males”, “Fredo-cons”, “cucks”, or selling out America in order to be invited to Leftist “cocktail parties”. After all, the taunters might claim, there must be a reason that the taunted aren’t running around like headless chicken demanding that we “do something NOW”. They seem to believe that the Left doesn’t actually play by any rules, and that we should fight back without restriction like the Left does… all the while not realizing that those social rules and boundaries are indeed helping to impede the Left and thus actually conserve something from the Left’s grasp.

In other words, the “what have you conserved” type arguments are based on an incorrect premise, namely the idea the assumption that the Left and Right are on equal footing and that the Left only wins because they play dirty while the Right plays “fair” if not loses on purpose.

The conservative movement has increasingly stood up to the broader Left more in the past 50 years than in the 50 years proceeding that. It only seems the other way around because longer ago we had more to give up in attrition. All we had 100 years ago or so was “normalcy” to appeal to and descriptive tenets that were already being rotted by the Left’s prospective goals. There was not cohesive conservative ideology let-alone organized movement. “Conservatism”, even into the ’30’s was merely a rejection of the Left’s economic command/control economy.

Sussing out the Left’s goals and what the conservative opposition is didn’t happen until the cold war. In other words, the Left used to have unrivaled momentum and had successfully infiltrated institutions via the “Gramscian march”. Against such momentum and fundamental transformation, any resistance against the Left is equates to something conserved. Against such institutional empowerment and movement momentum, actual victories and counter transformations of society may seem like a loss because the immediate outcomes show only a slowing of the Left’s relentless drive.

The transformation of fundamental precepts is necessary to counter the Left, and the transformation of such precepts may not show immediate reversals of any large magnitude… yet still, they are conserving. That there have been massive victories seems to escape some. Take, for example, 2nd Amendment. Less than 50 years ago almost every Constitutional lawyer in any potion of power would have told you that it wasn’t an individual right. Yet, today, the Supreme Court recognizes that it is. That didn’t happen overnight by “fighting dirty”. It happened because people took the time to change the fundamentals to the point where their argument was a fait accompli.

Ace, of the Ace of Spades HQ, quotes David Hines to show that the Left doesn’t suddenly “fight dirty” be being bold and forthright, but by Fabian machinations of waiting until the underlying structure has been favorably altered, and then, setting things off, as seen with the recent NRA benefits and programs being cancelled:

“Activists have been researching firearms companies, finding ones vulnerable to pressure or whose parent companies are. That’s where the REI thing comes in. This has not been done in a few weeks. It is careful preparation and it takes months. Groundwork was done months ago.

“…

“That’s how this stuff is done: preparation, preparation, PREPARATION, then carefully staged release, usually on a calendar, but in this case probably at the most favorable moment that presented itself.”

However, Ace, perhaps, seems to gravitate towards the “why aren’t you doing something crowd” that taunts “what have you conserved”:

” I would further say the biggest division on what used to be called ‘The Right’ are the two main factions’ understanding of this tactic and this desired end-state, and their total rejection of it — or soft toleration of it.

“Some of us are still in Business as Usual Mode and some of us are highly alarmed at how close the left is to achieving its end-state of a society divided between the Empowered True Believers and the Denigrated and Threatened Underclass, and are no longer willing to walk towards the gulags.

“As we consider civil equality and freedom-in-fact (not just theoretical freedom, but actual real freedom in the real world) to be principles that are more important than any other, we are willing to violate some of the less-important procedural principles to fight the left’s objective of complete subjugation of us.

“To many of us, it appears the Business As Usual crowd is focused on fairly trivial procedural matters while performing their appointed duties as the left’s enablers and enforcers of complete social and cultural rulership by the left.”

The danger of “throwing away the rules” to fight as all against all, as Hobbes might put it, is that the Left have already set themselves up and have the actual institutional power; this danger is compounded by both dismissing the Left as nothing but “special little snowflakes” who will fold if only stood up to, and offering only silly slap fighting responses to this new limitless political and social warfare. Those “procedural matters” are often the only thing protecting us from the Left, and they often embody principles that we may not get back once we eliminate them.

If it becomes a Hobbesian total war of all against all, then you had better make sure that you will win. And with their Gramscian march through the institutions and fundamental transformation of society, just who do you think is in the position to win an a political and social war with zero boundaries whatsoever? If we go all-or-nothing then we must go “full Pinochet”, so I ask: “Are we in a position to go “full Pinochet”, with everything that that entails?

2 Responses to What Have You Ever Conserved?

Exactly. Any time I hear one of these phonies asking “what have we conserved?” when referring to conservatism, it tells me that they’re utterly and abjectly clueless about what conservatism actually is.